Cling-on...

At the church where I serve we are spending our time together looking at the lives of kings who were placed in a position of leadership over the Jewish people. And as we look at the lives of these kings, we are going to discover several timeless truths that have the potential to powerfully impact how we live our lives today.  

This week, as we continue in this series, I would like for us to pick up where we left off last week. In 750 B.C., King Uzziah’s son, a man named Jotham assumed the duties of the king as a result of Uzziah’s leprosy. And for the remaining eleven years of his life, King Uzziah lived in isolation and separation from the Lord and the Jewish people.

After King Uzziah’s death in 739 B.C., Jotham took full control of the leadership of the Jewish people of the southern kingdom and proceeded to lead the Jewish people for sixteen years. Ezra, the writer of second Chronicles summarized his rule in 2 Chronicles 27:6 by saying that Jotham became mighty because he ordered his ways before the Lord.

Upon his death in 732 B.C., Jotham was succeeded as king by his son, who was a man named King Ahaz. King Ahaz proceeded to lead the Southern Kingdom of the Jewish people for sixteen years. However, King Ahaz was nothing like his father Jotham. Instead, King Ahaz led the Jewish people to turn from following the Lord to instead worship false gods. King Ahaz led the southern kingdom to embrace worshipping and participating in the very activities that led the Lord to give the Jewish people the Promised Land in the first place.

The Lord responded to the selfishness and rebellion of King Ahaz by allowing the Southern Kingdom to experience military defeats at the hands of the nation of Aram, the Northern Kingdom of Israel, and the Assyrian Empire. However, instead of recognizing and feeling remorse for his selfishness and rebellion, King Ahaz doubled down on his selfishness and rebellion. King Ahaz closed down the Temple in Jerusalem and instead set up altars throughout the city of Jerusalem for the worship of false gods. In addition, King Ahaz formed a military alliance with the Assyrian Empire.

And in 722 B.C., the Assyrian Empire invaded and conquered the northern kingdom of Israel, carrying off its residents to captivity. The Lord executed His right and just response to the Northern Kingdom’s selfishness and rebellion that had been occurring for over 200 years. The selfishness and rebellion that began in 930 B.C. ended with the removal of the northern kingdom of Israel, never to recover.

Then after 16 years of rebellious rule against the Lord, King Ahaz died in 715 B.C. And it is at this point, as the Southern Kingdom faces a growing threat from the Assyrian Empire, that we jump back into the history of the Jewish people in a letter that is recorded for us in the Old Testament of our Bibles called the book of 2 Kings, in 2 Kings 18:1:

Now it came about in the third year of Hoshea, the son of Elah king of Israel, that Hezekiah the son of Ahaz king of Judah became king. He was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem; and his mother's name was Abi the daughter of Zechariah. He did right in the sight of the LORD, according to all that his father David had done. He removed the high places and broke down the sacred pillars and cut down the Asherah. He also broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the sons of Israel burned incense to it; and it was called Nehushtan. He trusted in the LORD, the God of Israel; so that after him there was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor among those who were before him. For he clung to the LORD; he did not depart from following Him, but kept His commandments, which the LORD had commanded Moses. And the LORD was with him; wherever he went he prospered. And he rebelled against the king of Assyria and did not serve him.

Here we are introduced to a man named Hezekiah, the Son of King Ahaz who became King of the Southern Kingdom in 715 B.C. when he was twenty five years old. King Hezekiah proceeded to lead the Jewish people for a period of twenty nine years. After being introduced to the new king, we are given a summary statement of the overall leadership of King Hezekiah.

First, we discover that King Hezekiah did right in the sight of the Lord. In other words, King Hezekiah placed his confident trust in and followed the Lord in a way that pleased the Lord. Then, in verse 4, we see how King Hezekiah pleased the Lord. King Hezekiah did not follow the footsteps of his father who led the people to follow and worship false gods instead of the One True God. Instead King Hezekiah led the Jewish people to remove the various altars and elevated shrines where the worship of gods other than the one true God were held. King Hezekiah reopened the Temple and reinstituted the worship of the Lord.

And King Hezekiah’s trust in the Lord was unparalleled in the history of all the kings of the Jewish people. You see King Hezekiah clung to the Lord. In other words, King Hezekiah kept in close connection with the Lord so as to follow the Lord. King Hezekiah did not turn from following the Lord but instead kept the commandments of the Lord.

In addition, King Hezekiah broke the military alliance with the Assyrian Empire that his father, King Ahaz, had entered into. For King Hezekiah, there was no way that the Jewish people could continue to be in a close commitment with a nation that opposed the One True God. In addition, King Hezekiah led the Jewish people to military victories over the Philistines, who were their hated enemies.

However, there are times when living by one’s convictions can bring confrontation with those who do not share your convictions. And in 701 B.C. the Assyrian King Sennacherib launched a military campaign against the Southern Kingdom of the Jewish people. The Assyrian invasion resulted in the capture of 46 cities of the southern kingdom and a siege of the city of Jerusalem. King Hezekiah responded to the invasion by attempted to appease the Assyrian King with a tribute of 11 tons of silver and one ton of gold. However, instead of appeasing the Assyrian King, the tribute emboldened the Assyrian King, as we see in 2 Kings 18:17:

Then the king of Assyria sent Tartan and Rab-saris and Rabshakeh from Lachish to King Hezekiah with a large army to Jerusalem. So they went up and came to Jerusalem. And when they went up, they came and stood by the conduit of the upper pool, which is on the highway of the fuller's field. When they called to the king, Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebnah the scribe and Joah the son of Asaph the recorder, came out to them. Then Rabshakeh said to them, "Say now to Hezekiah, 'Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria, "What is this confidence that you have? "You say (but they are only empty words), 'I have counsel and strength for the war.' Now on whom do you rely, that you have rebelled against me? "Now behold, you rely on the staff of this crushed reed, even on Egypt; on which if a man leans, it will go into his hand and pierce it. So is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who rely on him. "But if you say to me, 'We trust in the LORD our God,' is it not He whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah has taken away, and has said to Judah and to Jerusalem, 'You shall worship before this altar in Jerusalem '? "Now therefore, come, make a bargain with my master the king of Assyria, and I will give you two thousand horses, if you are able on your part to set riders on them."How then can you repulse one official of the least of my master's servants, and rely on Egypt for chariots and for horsemen? "Have I now come up without the LORD'S approval against this place to destroy it? The LORD said to me, 'Go up against this land and destroy it.'"'"

Here we see messengers from the King of Assyria attempt to intimidate with Jewish people with propaganda that was designed to encourage the people of Jerusalem to rise up against King Hezekiah. The propaganda attempted to convince the people of Jerusalem that they were without help from either the Egyptians or the Lord as a result of the failure of King Hezekiah.

The propaganda was that King Hezekiah was relying on a weak Egyptian nation that they were about to defeat and that King Hezekiah had offended the Lord by removing all other places of worship and was requiring the Jewish people to only worship the Lord at the Temple in Jerusalem. A final piece of the propaganda was the offer of peace upon surrender that was followed by an attempt to convince the Jewish people that the Lord was behind their attack. We see how the Jewish people responded to the propaganda in verse 26:

 Then Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, and Shebnah and Joah, said to Rabshakeh, "Speak now to your servants in Aramaic, for we understand it; and do not speak with us in Judean in the hearing of the people who are on the wall."

While the Jewish people tried to stop the propaganda by urging the Assyrian messengers to speak in Arabic, which was the universal trade and political language of the world at this time in history, the messengers would have none of it. Instead the messengers ramped up their attempts to intimidate the residents of Jerusalem in verse 27:

 But Rabshakeh said to them, "Has my master sent me only to your master and to you to speak these words, and not to the men who sit on the wall, doomed to eat their own dung and drink their own urine with you?" Then Rabshakeh stood and cried with a loud voice in Judean, saying, "Hear the word of the great king, the king of Assyria. "Thus says the king, 'Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he will not be able to deliver you from my hand; nor let Hezekiah make you trust in the LORD, saying, "The LORD will surely deliver us, and this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria." 'Do not listen to Hezekiah, for thus says the king of Assyria, "Make your peace with me and come out to me, and eat each of his vine and each of his fig tree and drink each of the waters of his own cistern, until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of olive trees and honey, that you may live and not die." But do not listen to Hezekiah when he misleads you, saying, "The LORD will deliver us." 'Has any one of the gods of the nations delivered his land from the hand of the king of Assyria? 'Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim, Hena and Ivvah? Have they delivered Samaria from my hand? 'Who among all the gods of the lands have delivered their land from my hand, that the LORD should deliver Jerusalem from my hand?'"

The messengers of the King of Assyria ramp up their propaganda by encouraging the residents of Jerusalem to not listen to their king or place their trust in the Lord. The messengers basically say “Your King Hezekiah is misleading you because the Lord will not deliver you. After all, we are the Assyrian Empire. We are the most powerful nation on the planet. We have conquered every kingdom that we have faced and every god we have faced. We even defeated your fellow Jewish countryman of the Northern Kingdom. What makes you think that your God is any different?”

Then the Assyrian Empire, who had the city of Jerusalem under siege, turned their attention to defeating the nation of Egypt. However, to make sure that the residents of Jerusalem did not forget what they had said. The Assyrian King has his messengers deliver a letter to the city of Jerusalem to remind them of what he had said.

Now I want us to take a minute and imagine ourselves in this event from history as King Hezekiah. You have strived to place your confident trust in and follow the Lord in a way that pleased the Lord. You have led the Jewish people to remove the places where the worship of gods other than the one true God were held and have reopened the Temple. You have kept in close connection with the Lord so as to follow the Lord.

And now you are faced with an enemy that is opposed to the Lord and that will not be appeased to stop their invasion of the people of the Lord. What would you be thinking? What would you be feeling? How would you respond?  

Tomorrow, we will see how King Hezekiah responded to the desperate situation that he found himself in…